You can’t get the blood out.

We are born. We die. Somewhere in between we live. And how we live is up to us. That’s it.

What I learned in this tragedy was the eternal lesson of good people going bad.

I thought if I loved you enough I could change you. I was so stupid.

This place is Hell’s waiting room.

There’s no better way for a woman to punish a man than to make him sleep away from her.

People talk about survival. What they mean is killing the other guy.

I like to think she hates my guts a little less every hour.

If you’d saved the girl, you’d be a hero. Next time.

I wanted to see the bullet coming, wanted to know the exact moment of my death.

‘There’s no time for right or wrong,’ I said.

You shouldn’t have done that, Dave.

She played me with a bad hand, and I fell for it every time.

Remember. Observe, assess and act. No hesitation. No remorse.

I turned to her, my whole body hard with tiredness and regret.

There’s nothing worse than delivering bad news to women. I hoped I wouldn’t get good at it.

She smiled at him like a freshman invited to the senior prom. It made my blood boil.

The people inside the gym didn’t stand a dead drunk’s chance.

The sound of him drinking was indescribable—like dirty runoff down a storm drain.

This guy was a humorless bag of nothing but.

Smiling, he handed Landry the bloody aluminum bat Warnick had used. ‘Time to die, old man,’ he said.

She gave herself a hard twist and fell into a sitting position, staring at me with those maggot-filled doll’s eyes.

Sal turned, an eye stalk hanging from his teeth.

When I lifted up the skin, a fat kidney worm dripping with gore raised its bald, blind head and glared at me.

It’s not about winning, it’s about doing what’s right. And yes, we will do what’s right.

I’m not a bad person.

I was a spectator who had gotten free admission to a freak show.

I felt a lunatic’s laugh welling up inside me.

Did you ever think it won’t be the undead who kill us, but ordinary people?

Drive. He’s already dead.

But I was still determined to protect her. It might be the one good thing I would ever do in my life. I wondered if God would even notice.

Even now I can’t describe the fear that contaminated my blood like black ink.

‘Can’t you see what they are?’ I said. ‘They’re all dead.’

I don’t know how these things died without benefit of a bullet to the brain pan. They seemed to exist in an eternal twilight of longing.

I heard them tearing at it. It was the sound of mortality.

For an instant I saw before me the young girl this used to be.

‘Eighth one this week,’ he said.

I knew then I was going to die in the street without ever seeing Holly again. All because I tried to help an old woman, proving for all eternity that no good deed goes unpunished.

During our time together in this place Holly didn’t outright avoid me or treat me rudely. But she wasn’t—how do women like to put it? She wasn’t emotionally available to me.

Her voice was small and distant, like she’d already left the room.

His eyes were like two wafers of slate, grey and lifeless.

A riverless silence made the air heavy.

I don’t know why I told you all those things, but I did. Maybe it was because I’m a drunk, and sometimes drunks like to confess.